Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £15,150 to £32,780
Decent motorway cruiser, good fuel economy, low emissions.
Firm ride on economy tyres, bit too taxi-like inside.
It's decent enough car for a sales rep, but they might want a bit more standard equipment.
Under bonnet lies a 1.9-litre TDI 103bhp engine linked to a five-speed gearbox. It isn't scintillating, but does offer adequate performance - just about enough for a sales reps who spend many hours on the motorway. It'll go from 0-60mph in 12.4 seconds and top speed is 119mph - reduced aerodynamic drag on the BlueMotion makes it fractionally faster than the standard Passat. There is enough torque to allow you to overtake on the motorway without changing down and the gearing is so high that you'll often find yourself cruising along in fourth, thinking you're in fifth.
The top three gears in the five-speed box are higher geared than the standard, making the engine less stressed under load. The idle speed of the engine has been chopped by 100rpm, making for less fuel to be burnt when sat in static traffic.
On the twisty bits don't expect to fling it into corners and get a totally controlled feel. The car remains fairly flat in the middle of the bend and there's enough grip available to inspire confidence when approaching corners at moderately high speeds. The ride is a little firm: the economy tyres and the lower ride-height mean that you'll feel the more cavernous bumps, but on motorway surfaces it'll absorb the minor indentations in the road without any problems.
The brakes are sharp and positive, but the steering has virtually no feel at all - it's vague with little or no feedback coming through.
To help you drive the Passat BlueMotion as economically as possible, a shift indicator appears on the central information display between the dials, letting you know when the optimum time to change gear is. However, in practice, it's so hidden away at the bottom of the display that you barely notice it - and if you concentrate too hard on changing gears when the car tells you to, you might forget to look out of the windscreen, which isn't recommended. You're better off just using some common sense and changing up at around 2,000rpm.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Volkswagen Passat
wrote on 06 06 2006